Quoted:Diabetes and surgical career

[Doodledog]

An entering medical student asks:

I am a student at ......, and really interested in surgery, partially due to my previous surgeries. Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes mellitus. I am currently using pump therapy with the Continuous Real-Time glucose monitoring system, and rarely ever have complications.

I know that I will be able to handle the rigors of a career in surgery, due to the fact that I am extremely healthy, aside from the diabetes.

When applying for a surgical residency, will anyone discriminate me for having diabetes? I know that it would be illegal, but could it still happen? Also, do I need to even tell anyone that I am Diabetic? My disease will not jeopardize my patients, especially with my current treatment, so should I worry about this?

Thanks for your advice.

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[dpmd]

One of the attendings at my program has diabetes (the reason I know is because he mentioned it one time when we were talking about the importance of food). Evidently it is possible to be an attending surgeon with diabetes. It may be difficult during training if things become hard to control (weird meal times, lack of sleep, bad cafeteria food-may make a difference, you probably know your body best though). There should be a way to make it work. As far as whether you might be hurt by letting anyone know, I don't think it would even need to come up (as long as you don't think you will need special accomodations).

 

[NotAProgDirector]

I agree. Much of the answer to your question depends on how "easy" your diabetes is to control (Easy is in quotes because diabetes management is never actually easy). If you have wild fluctuations in your sugar, frequent hypoglycemic episodes, etc, then surgery may be more difficult for you. If in general your sugars are well controlled, then I don't see much of a problem. As the poster above points out, you may have much less control of your diet and mealtimes and you'll need to take that into consideration, as well as managing your sugar when on call.

One other potential problem is the OR and your pump. While in the OR, you'll be scrubbed and be unable to adjust your pump settings. If your system is self adjusting or doesn't need frequent changes, then you won't have a problem. If it does, you'll either need to step out of the OR and rescrub, or ask one of the circ nurses to adjust it for you. Both of those situations could be awkward, but not insurmountable.

 

[Apollyon]

In the community in which I work, the surgical group has two (that I know of) diabetic doctors - one is an older fellow that takes all the night call, and does Lantus and regular (Humalog or Novolog or something). The other is a younger guy that is on a pump - he takes all of his call, comes in as needed, and does fine.

I would think that adjusting pump settings would be just like the pager - have another person do it, or use a sterile towel to hold the pump. Certainly, it's easily overcome.